Kickboxing Kicked my A$$

Wow, so I went to the Kickboxing class I talked about the other day. It is in Kaneohe, at the Smith Tae Kwon Do center. They let me try the class out for free to see if it would be something I am interested in. I can see why. It is pretty tough. It was cool though. It's not like a cardio-kickboxing class where you're dancing around kicking and punching towards yourself in the mirror. You split up with a partner for the whole class and you wear boxing gloves and punch the pads your partner has. It was a great workout, you do both the punching and the holding of the pads and you take turns. We did a ton of kicks, and you actually get to kick and punch hard. It's amazing the difference between punching the air and landing a punch on one of those pads. So I think I'm going to pay the money and take this class twice a week. If I don't lose weight after I start taking this class it definitely means I'm eating too much. The class was two days ago and I am so incredibly sore. My hips are in major pain, but it's the good pain that you feel after you haven't used a muscle for a while and now you've woken it up. You also do a lot of sit ups in this class. And pushups. I'm curious to see what the next class is going to be like. I think there are two things I really dislike about this kind of class. Well, it really boils down to one thing: Sweat. Sweat in your gloves that you keep taking off and then when you put your hands back in, you feel all your sweat in there. The other thing is you actually grab your partner around the neck, swing them around and do kicks on the pad. This means you have to touch your partner's sweaty neck and get real close to their sweaty head. Gross. I tried not to think about it and once you get going you don't really notice it, but still, gross.

My partner kept telling me to stop "fencing" I think I was doing the cardio kickboxing punches where you kind of leap around and dance and fully extend your arm. Of course you're supposed to really scrunch up and protect your head from your partner. And you want to punch quick and pull it back to protect your head again. It'll take some practice to change that.

I am not really seeing any results and I'm sure I didn't lose any weight. I did the class Wed night, played tennis Thursday morning, but then it was Thanksgiving so I ate all day while I waited for dinner and then ate a ton of turkey and pie and brussel sprouts. Then we drank wine and went in my friend Mike's hot tub. It was a great day, but now I am sore from Wednesday's class and feeling fat.

Here's to sticking with my pre-New Year's Goals!

This week: Today- use new jump rope and at least jump for 5 minutes. Tennis tomorrow morning. Hopefully a hike on Sat or Sun. Monday- kickboxing class, Tuesday- tennis, Wednesday- NOTHING, Thursday- kickboxing class, Friday- NOTHING again.

Oh and start training for the Great Aloha Run soon. Have to start the walking distances now.

New Weight Loss Goal

Weight- 145. Yuck!

Goal- 140 by January 1st.

Alright, it's time for a pre-New Year's Goal. Hopefully I can lose a few pounds before the New Year rolls around so my New Year resolution doesn't have to focus on losing weight like it usually does. I know that the ten pounds that I've put on recently have to do with several factors. One, not blogging. For some reason this tends to keep me on track. I think it has to do with reflecting on my progress or lack thereof. Two, eating too much carbs. I can predict with great certainty that when I let myself eat a lot of carbs, I start to backslide into worse eating habits. There are many reasons that this is true, you can read my past blogs to find out why. Three, I am not involved in a sport that is truly calling me to be active. Tennis is a lot of fun, but I'm not that great, Ananda and I can only play twice a week, and there's no one telling me what to do (a coach) so sometimes I get lazy. So it hasn't been enough. So that's a clue to some of the things I need to change in order to reach a 5 pound weight loss goal by new year. It was 10 pounds- my goal, but then I lost sight of it and to say I will lose 10 pounds in a month is a little too much. If I happen to lose 10, then that's fantastic, but I'm going for at least 5 right now. That's a little over a pound a week for the next four weeks.

Here's my plan:
Diet- I have been researching tofu recipes, not necessarily because I think tofu is that much better for you, but because when I get interested in something new, I tend to think ahead more about my grocery list, which helps me plan ahead, which in the long run will help me lose weight. I know what foods help me lose weight, and which ones are bad for me. That's no secret to me. I just need to plan ahead in order to eat the right amounts. I also want to start looking at tuna fish recipes for lunch. Not with mayonnaise obviously. I actually haven't had mayonnaise in a really long time.
Diet goal for this week then is more tofu, more tuna, less white rice. Try to eat mostly turkey on Thursday for Thanksgiving.

Exercise- Keep up with Tennis Tuesdays and Saturdays with Ananda. However, I have finally started saving up for a martial arts class. I'm getting excited about starting. I am going to go try out a kick-boxing class in Kaneohe on Wednesday. They let you try it for free to see if it's right for you. They also have a Tae Kwon Do class that I want to try out before I decide. I would love to do Tae Kwon Do, but they expect three days a week from you, where kickboxing, you only are expected to go twice a week. I would like to keep playing tennis and I also don't want to get so busy that Nate and I don't have time to spend together. So I will probably go for kickboxing. Once I get to know people over there and get used to going, I may decide to change later on anyway.
Exercise goal for this week- Tennis tonight, Kickboxing tomorrow night, walk on Thursday after eating Turkey, Saturday tennis, and hopefully Nate and I will hike on Saturday or Sunday.

Check in- I should be able to check in to my goals on Sundays and Mondays to update on the weight loss.

Feel free to leave your own pre-New Year's goals!

Cleopatra the Counseling Cockroach

Just a funny story that happened to me the other day. So, I work at a school on an air force base. My office is an upstairs teacher's lounge. This is normally a great thing- it's a huge space, it's air conditioned, it has it's own bathroom. The biggest drawback is that it is a teacher's lounge, which means that every staff member has a key to its door and teacher's will come in to use the bathroom.
In my bathroom there lives a large B52 cockroach that I have seen several times, but since for some reason they terrify me, I have not been able to bring myself to kill it. Whenever it moves, it scares the bejesus out of me. Normally I just try to shoo it out of the bathroom before I go. I have named her Cleopatra the Counseling Cockroach since she has taken up permanent residence there.
The other day I got to my office and suddenly had to use the bathroom really badly, so I hurried in and sat down. I saw there was no TP on the roller, so I looked over to the stack of spare rolls, and there she was, right on the top roll, looking at me. Well, I had no choice, so I shook her off and put the new roll on the roller. She was on the floor of the tiny bathroom looking up at me. So I kept my eye on her while I finished my business. I stood up to pull up my pants and she came at me. I swear to god. Anyone who has encountered these things knows that if you're afraid of them, they tend to come at you. So I make this squealing noise, and throw open the door and dance out of the bathroom. I just zip up my pants and turn around to look for her and the teacher's lounge door opens. I was literally seconds away from getting caught with my pants down in my office! I was so terrified by a little bug that I didn't even consider the fact that someone might open the door! And of course Cleopatra was nowhere to be found. I pretended like I was just propping the door open and talked story with the teacher that just came in to use the bathroom. I don't even know if I flushed the toilet before I danced out. How embarrassing! Afterwards I had a good laugh because I am not usually scared of anything, but those damn bugs terrify me!